SAN ANTONIO — It was 1998, and the NBA was in the early stages of a lockout that would spill into the following year. Pistons star forward Grant Hill had hired a shooting coach to help him get ready for the eventual season, and it was not going well. Hill worked with him for a couple of weeks before ending the experiment.

“I hired him and I worked out with him a couple times and he had my shot all screwed up,” recalled Hill in an interview with Sporting News. “I hate saying that, but it’s the truth. So I was down at Duke during the lockout, before training camp was supposed to start. Johnnie Dawkins was putting me and Thomas Hill through a workout, part shooting, part just staying in shape. I remember, I missed everything.”

At the time, Engelland was still very much an unknown, but he had worked with and helped his old high school teammate, Steve Kerr, a few years earlier. Hill was skeptical. “I said to Johnnie, ‘Look, working with a shooting coach only made me worse at shooting.’”

Still, Hill met with Engelland at Duke’s Card Gym. Engelland gave Hill a couple of suggestions — mostly about balance — and left him with his contact information. “I won’t call you or bug you,” Engelland told Hill. “But if you want to work with [me], just let me know.”

Not only did Hill start working with Engelland, he noticed so much improvement that he brought Engelland to Detroit with him that season. Hill averaged 21.1 points that year and shot 47.9 percent from the field, up from 45.2 percent the previous year. He made 75.2 percent of his free throws — then a career high. He stuck with Engelland the next year and had the best season of his career: 25.8 points, 48.9 percent shooting, 79.5 percent from the free-throw line, 34.7 percent on 3-pointers.

The experience with Hill taught Engelland a lot. “For anyone to improve, it is going to take work to get better,” Engelland said. “You might get worse before you get better. It’s hard, improving and changing mechanics you have had for 18, 19, 20 years — you have to rewire it, that takes time. Improvement is an easy sell, because there is a satisfaction there, if you are improving and helping the team win. Hopefully, it is an easy sell. But you do have to sell, because there are going to be some down days.”

It was the up days with Hill, though, that sealed Engelland’s legend as a shot doctor.

Fast-forward 15 years, and Engelland is now part of the staff in San Antonio, where he has been since 2005 — and, word is, new coach Kerr will pursue him to join the Warriors. In the meantime, Engelland bristles at the notion of being some sort of shooting guru and describes himself as a basketball coach first and foremost. Indeed, the work he does with players is not just focused on shooting, but shooting in the context of the game itself.

In general, the Spurs’ coaching staff behind head coach Gregg Popovich — including new guys Jim Boylen and former Spur Ime Udoka — has earned plaudits for the team’s overall success. San Antonio spends wisely, bringing in players with recognizable talents and then counting on assistants like Engelland and Chad Forcier to bring those talents to the fore while also improving basics like defense and ball movement.

While Engelland deserves credit for his much-noted work with point guard Tony Parker and forward Kawhi Leonard, Forcier also works with Leonard, and should get credit for the development of Danny Green and George Hill — the player who was traded to Indiana in the deal that brought Leonard to San Antonio to begin with.

“Those guys have been great,” Green said. “Chip is always in our ear, always talking to us, making us focus on our free throws, those things. I work with Chad a lot, he has been great for me, from Day 1, working with me on the mechanics, the fundamentals. Making sure I am in tune with those things and getting back to the basics when he sees me slipping with those things. I have become more consistent and efficient as a shooter because of that.”

In each of the last four years, the Spurs have ranked in the top four in both field-goal percentage and 3-point percentage. While that can be attributed, in part, to their superb ball movement, passing goes for naught if you don’t knock down the shots.

Hill agrees that Engelland is more than a shooting guru; that he fixes players’ mechanics in the context of basketball as a team game. But for the Spurs, the end results of his lessons have been higher field-goal percentages — and with the team shooting a record 52.7 percent from the field in the Finals, that’s working out quite nicely.

“Having Chip in your ear throughout the season is really helpful,” Hill said. “All shooters, even the best ones, go through bad times with their shot. Trying to deal with that while dealing with the NBA season can be challenging, but Chip was always there with insight. Calling him a shot doctor, as great as he is at fixing shooting, is limiting. He has a great mind for understanding the game and players. It is a different perspective.